And it looks like we’ll now be forced to use dishwashers that don’t clean dishes thanks to proposed regulations that will reduce water use (which is in addition to a 2012 regulation that already restricted water use).

The Hillreports on the Nanny State’s latest salvo in the war against modern civilization.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of a politically motivated drive to increase dishwasher efficiency standards, which are so bad that they would cause consumers to re-wash dishes, erasing any efficiency gains. Rob McAver, the group’s head lobbyist, said regulators are going too far and the new rules will allow only 3.1 gallons to be used to wash each load of dishes. …They then ran standard tests with food stuck to dishes. “They found some stuff that was pretty disgusting,” McAver said. …“The poor performance that would result would totally undercut and go backwards in terms of energy and water use, because of the need for running the dishwasher again, or pre-rinsing or hand-washing, which uses a lot of water,” he said.

Great, another bone-headed step by the government that will make life less enjoyable.

I’m already one of those people who rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher because I hate the idea that they won’t be fully clean afterwards.

So I can only imagine how bad it will be if this absurd example of red tape is imposed and I have to buy a new dishwasher.

Ernest Istook, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma,wrote in a Washington Times piecethat complying with the 2012 rule, based on DOE estimates, added roughly $44 to the cost of each machine. “Now their 2015 proposal will add another $99 to the price tag, even by DOE’s own admission,” he wrote.

Julie Borowski has the right assessment. Her column for Freedom Works is from 2012, but it’s very appropriate still today.

Are you disappointed in every shower head that you purchase? Does your toilet have trouble flushing? Have you noticed that your dishes are still dirty after the dishwasher cycle is completed? …Some of us may be quick to blame the manufacturer of these home appliances. But the manufacturers are just abiding by the costly regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy.

What’s really frustrating is that these regulations reduce the quality of life without even reducing water usage.

…it has only led to people hacking their shower heads to remove the intrusion that is blocking water flow in order to have a more relaxing shower that actually gets them clean. There is no proof that the water restrictions have actually saved water because many people just end up taking longer showers than they otherwise would.

Amen. Every so often I wind up at a hotel with restricted-flow showerheads and it’s a hassle because I probably spend twice as long in the shower.

Not to mention problems government has created elsewhere in bathrooms.

…water restrictions are also the reason that our toilets have trouble flushing. Many of us have become accustomed to flushing the toilet multiple times before the toilet bowl is clear. The 1992 Energy Policy Act states that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. These water restrictions are the reason why we have to use plungers far more often than we used to.

I won’t torment readers with a TMI moment, but I will say that I now routinely flush at the halfway point when seated on a toilet. And even that doesn’t necessarily preclude a third flush at the end of the process.

The only good news is that this gives me a daily reminder that government has far too much power to micro-manage our lives.

Speaking of excessive government, here’s another example of the regulatory state run amok.

Pizza makers could face fines and prison time under a new Food and Drug Administration rule for failing to provide calorie counts for their billions of combinations of pizza orders. …FDA’s menu labeling rule will go into effect on December 1st, 2016… If a company does not perfectly comply with the mandate, food may be rendered “misbranded” under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a violation that carries criminal penalties. Failure to comply with the regulation could lead to government seizure of food, a maximum $1,000 fine, and a one-year prison sentence. …Revising systems under strict compliance with the regulation’s guidelines is expected to cost Domino’s $1,600 to $4,700 per restaurant annually. In general, the rule is expected to cost businesses $537 million, losses that necessarily must be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

And I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that all this coercion and red tape will have no positive effect.

Several studies on the effectiveness of calorie displays suggest the mandate will have little to no effect on the public’s choices. In one study on menu-labeling in New York City, Brian Elbel, a professor at New York University, found that only 28 percent of people who saw calorie labels said that the information influenced their choices. There was no statistically significant change in calories purchased. In another study, Lisa Harnack of the University of Minnesota examined whether knowledge about calorie counts of menu items would influence how much a person ate, even if the information did not change ordering habits. A lab study revealed that, overall, consumers did not change how much they ate after receiving information about their food’s caloric content.

Which is why, when writing about this topic last year, I predicted “If this regulation is implemented, it will have zeromeasurable impact on American waistlines.”

[…] the busybodies in Washington for subjecting me to inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, second-rate dishwashers, weak-flow showerheads, and inadequate washing machines, I would be far more upset if those […]

The ultimate irony is the same nanny state authoritarians of both the left and right “humanitarians” keep allowing more people into the country. Pretty simple math to understand it’s effect on resources.

[…] consumers are only in danger when government puts its thumb on the scale with handouts, subsidies, restrictions, bailouts, regulations, licensing, mandates, and other forms of intervention. Because when […]

I have been removing shower-head flow restrictors for years. Whenever I go to a hotel, I pack a plumber’s wrench and a good shower head. After showering, I replace the original shower head so that the hotel maids will not discover my secret.

Clothes dryers are now nasty rubbish, and clothes remain damp after one cycle – even at the highest temperature.

Well, I feel bad leaving on a sour note, … so here is a solution ?
from the water underworld. Temporary solution, … … until the pitchforks of the voter-lemmings catch up with you and update the regulation…

On the plus side for showers, it’s my only time to get away from the idiocracy that is Massachusetts. We just dodged a bullet with the 2024 Olympics, to find out that there is a bill working its way through the legislature to make us a “sanctuary state”. OMG!!!

Oh yes… …and when I mentioned the high cost of long showers, that obviously does not apply to me. In my case, the more time I waste in the shower, the less time I have to pander progress stifling ideas on Mr. Mitchell’s blog. Perhaps I should spend a little more time on a tax audit or something…

…And when one counts people with $$$.$$$ six figure salaries spending an extra five minutes in the shower, you realize how costly those extra few gallons of water are.

They are basically washing with San Pellegrino water. The same people who are wining about being “squeezed”, support a society where we bear the cost of washing with Evian water!

Let’s be a bit more quantitative:

Take a typical Silicon Valley software engineer who now has to wash his hands in those trendy, politically correct low flow eco-sinks. It takes him/her an extra 20” per wash to rinse his hands. Three times a day (likely more) amounts to one minute wasted. And he saves about ½ gallon of water.

Our engineer costs his company at least 145k (includes 110k salary benefits etc. but actually does NOT even include the cost of space and infrastructure he needs to work). So that extra minute costs at least $1.19 (based on 250 work days per year) to save ½ gallon of tap water! The cost comes to $2.38 per gallon of saved water.

Typical tap water costs about $0.50 per “unit”= one hundred cubic feet. That is $0.50 per 748 gallons for tap water. So our Silicon Valley company pays $1782.73 per unit of water saved! When the typical price charged for such water is $0.50! Even in draught stricken California the PENALTY punitive rate for going over your water allocation is no more than $10 per unit. Yet our Silicon Valley company pays $1782.73 per unit to have its employees waste time at their politically correct eco-low-flow sinks!

For reference, desalinated water delivered to homes would cost about $2 per unit (oh my! I guess that might drain the oceans, which are after all a finite resource!).

So who pays for the idiotic cost of our silicon valley eco-drip sinks?

That cost is, of course, passed on to the rest of American society.

How? By having the silicon valley company charge ever so slightly higher prices to a huge consumer population (to counter the wasted employee time)… …if, of course, the market can support that increase. If the market cannot support it, then our company’s worldwide competitiveness decreases and the company’s growth trajectory is stunted ever so slightly. But a dozen software engineer jobs lost already amount to about 2.5 billion gallons of potable water in cost according to the above pricing balance. One way or another Americans have to bear the cost.

The cost benefit analysis is not just off. It’s off by more than three orders of magnitude!

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Let’s take another classic eco-falacy:

“Biking to work saves resources !”.

Really? Until you realize that cars burn gas while humans burn some extra expensive human food.

Do a quick back of the envelope calculation:

So let’s assume I substitute my daily work commute from driving to cycling. Supposed I live in an eco-friendly densely packed city so my commute is on the short side, say 10 miles. My handy voter-lemming eco calculator congratulates me that:

The relative price of these two quantities should be a rough indicator of how many resources are consumed:

¾ gallon of gas : ~ $2.25.
1000 calories of human food: ???

I challenge you to find 1000 calories of human nutrition for $2.25. That is a whole extra half daily food intake for the typical person. Of course it has to be balanced food. You cannot wolf down half a box of sugar or two super-sized soft drinks (they are banned anyway). Try to go to the grocery store and procure 1000 calories of nutritious human food for the equivalent $2.25 of gas. Go to your environmentally conscious Whole Foods? Even worse. Go organic? Forget it. Go to your trendy San Francisco restaurant where you can discuss with your buddies the next great environmental initiative? Astronomical.

The American voter-lemming continues his march towards the middle-income nations.